EdCanvas is a web service which allows you to search, find, clip and collect any kind of content, from text to video clips and to organize it into visual boards for educational and learning purposes.

Differently than Pinterest, EdCanvas is specifically targeted at the education world and at schools and teachers, and it makes possible not just to collect "images" from web pages, but to collect and organize whichever content elements you want, including full web pages.

EdCanvas boards also offer the ability to easily reposition each item in the collection according to your preferences and it provides a number of pre-set layout options for displaying content in your boards.

The strongest feature for EdCanvas is an integrated search engine, which allows you to search for images, websites, video clips across Google, YouTube and Flickr, and lets you grab and drop any relevant result into anyone of your collections. Furthermore Edcanvas can connect directly to your Dropbox or Google Drive giving you access to all of your personal library files.

EdCanvas is a web service which allows you to search, find, clip and collect any kind of content, from text to video clips and to organize it into visual boards for educational and learning purposes.

Differently than Pinterest, EdCanvas is specifically targeted at the education world and at schools and teachers, and it makes possible not just to collect "images" from web pages, but to collect and organize whichever content elements you want, including full web pages.

EdCanvas boards also offer the ability to easily reposition each item in the collection according to your preferences and it provides a number of pre-set layout options for displaying content in your boards.

The strongest feature for EdCanvas is an integrated search engine, which allows you to search for images, websites, video clips across Google, YouTube and Flickr, and lets you grab and drop any relevant result into anyone of your collections. Furthermore Edcanvas can connect directly to your Dropbox or Google Drive giving you access to all of your personal library files.

To refine a science of how to transmit, explain and illustrate what "needs to be known" or that we empower learners to create their own learning direction, approach, scaffolding and pace, by providing them with the ability to "drive" and "build" their learning value and not by having them become open sponges that memorize and comprehend what we offer them?

From the original article by Dominik Lukes: "A self-directed, self-motivated learner, will take any resources (no matter how pedagogically naive or badly instructionally designed – Khan Academy, iTunesU lectures, iPad ebooks, labs, conventional classes or TED videos) and use them to learn.

As the learner becomes more aware of their own learning (gaining metacognitive skills), they will look for resources that suit their learning better. And, in many cases, will create such resources.

That’s why we need to encourage a culture of the remix. Or in starker terms: Curation and creation over education."

Robin Good: If you are interested in exploring content curation as a possible venue for innovating teaching and learning approaches, you will find lots of valuable information in this new article by @NancyW entitled Developing Future Workskills Through Content Curation.

In it she points to a study conducted last year, the Apollo Research Institute Future Workskills 2020, that identifies critical workskills needed for future jobs and how fitting "content curation" may be in cultivating and refining many of those.

She writes: "A closer look suggests that critical workforce skills identified in this \ study can be easily aligned with the skills practiced with content curation.

The skills a student employs to successfully curate information include curiosity, media literacy, ability to make connections across disciplines, information literacy, the ability to evaluate and understand perspective, synthesize and evaluate information, and a good dose of self-direction."

Robin Good: What does curation mean from an educational viewpoint? And what is the key difference between "collecting" and "curating".

Nancy White (@NancyW), a 21st Century Learning & Innovation Specialist and the author of Innovations in Education blog, has written an excellent article, dissecting the key characterizing traits of curation, as a valuable resource to create and share knowledge.

She truly distills some key traits of curation in a way that is clear and comprehensible to anyone.

She writes: "The first thing I realized is that in order to have value-added benefits to curating information, the collector needs to move beyond just classifying the objects under a certain theme to deeper thinking through a) synthesis and b) evaluation of the collected items.

How are they connected?"

Excellent definition.

And then she also frames perfectly the relevance of "context" for any meaningful curation project by writing: "I believe when we curate, organization moves beyond thematic to contextual – as we start to build knowledge and understanding with each new resource that we curate.

Themes have a common unifying element – but don’t necessarily explain the “why.”

Theme supports a central idea – Context allows the learner to determine why that idea (or in this case, resource) is important.

So, as collecting progresses into curating, context becomes essential to determine what to keep, and what to discard."

But there's a lot more insight distilled in this article as Nancy captures with elegance the difference between collecting for a personal interest and curating for a specific audience.

She finally steals my full endorsement for this article by discretely inquirying how great a value it would be to allow students to "curate" the domains of interest they need to master.

Robin Good: Curatr, an elearning platform built upon the idea of discovery through the curation and sense-making of existing information, has just released an updated version of its platform which you can check out here: http://www.curatr.co.uk/index2.php

Curatr allows professional trainers, experts, and teachers, as much as students to organize and curate information for the purpose of learning.

What I like very much is the Curatr promotional video, which says lots of true things about education and about the way we should carry it out in the future. The next-button-robot approach to information memorization needs to be replaced with a new approach: learning to understand how learners construct knowledge.

Curatr is about the construction of the scaffolding that allows people to learn and to find the resources that should help them best learn what they are interested into.

Martin Smith, Chief Revenue Officer at Noodle, has written an interesting article highlighting how the future of universities is about to be completely transformed, and how, similarly to what is happening in the music industry, curators, or those organization acting in such role, will play a dramatically important role in the future of higher education.

Key factors that will make this a reality are:

The price of content will freefall over the next seven years.

The supply of learning content will swell.

Education will increasingly be personalized.

"Universities will be masters of curation, working as talent agencies. They’ll draw royalties and license fees from the content professors create and curate.

In many ways, the role of the best universities will become even more focused on identifying, investing in, and harvesting the returns from great talent."

Becoming consciously the curator for others for a particular niche, area of expertise or interest. Disseminate resources, add value, put in perspective, create connections, present in a different light/media/language.

Real time curation allows you to be part of an event, that you physically might not be attending or being on the opposite end allows you to be the bridge for others to participate at an event where you are present, but your network is not."

I supposed twitter can be used or any tool can be used for anything,but some tools are made with certain intended affordance by the creator that would make the tool less effective for certain functions. curation in a way is capturing things void of time (i probably drawing too much from museum), while twitter is fast pace timeline of interactive (or one way) discourse.... they seems to be inherently different.

i'm just automatically sceptical when 'one tool can be use for all' theme appear. but it is an interesting suggestion.

This infographic provides insight into showing how to enhance learning. Critical thinking is an important skill in today's world. Students need encouragement in taking ownership of their own learning. We can find ways to encourage students from this link.

Robin Good: School librarians may be one of the new change-making roles in the educational revolution silently taking place. Their role as organizers, collectors and guides to relevant information is a skillset that is not only in growing demand by the marketplace, but which perfectly fits the learning needs of today students / tomorrow information workers.

Joyce Valenza and Shannon Miller, who recently presented at the Building Learning Communities conference, think that we are about to witness a "golden age" of librarianship and that there are five skills that information / school librarians need to cultivate.

The first of these is curation.

"Given the unprecedented quantity of information learners are exposed to, the librarian’s role is more important than ever.

School librarians, with their specialized training and background in collecting, organizing, preserving, and disseminating information, must now teach their patrons—students and educators alike—to perform these tasks."

Images can be easily searched and imported via Google Images and Flickr, and text can be easily added in a number ways. Visual objects can be positioned and personalized on the page and final scrapbooks can be downloaded or printed.

I like that these will be seachable so that they can be shared. I'm excited to test drive this. I agree that it may be better than social bookmarking, because even a well-organized diggo tag will have things off topic or for some audiences because we all have different ideas of the meaning of a word used for tagging.

Robin Good: Curtis Bonk, professor emeritus at Indiana University, shares in this interview I did with him two years ago, what he thinks are the new skills required to teachers of the 21st century to leverage the power of the Internet for learning. And curation is among them.

Many thanks for sharing this, Robin! I couldn´t agree more with the prediction that 21st century education will definitely need "super e-coaches" with 3 characteristics (1) domain expertise, (2) a deep understanding of the Internet for learning and teaching purposes and (3) counselling skills. If we, as teachers, are able to perform this task, this, in turn, can also serve as a model for our students so they can develop themselves the necessary skills to integrate and make sense of the vast information available. Skills that they will certainly need for their future.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.